Most of the time when we use our computers we never stop and realize the ideas and history behind certain things. As to why certain things are put in a specific area and so on. I feel like this is specially common with a computer keyboard. Of course it is made up of the alphabet and numbers but there are also other components such as special characters and function keys located at the top of the keyboard. So, what might have influence the order of the whole keyboard?

Well like most of the things today people build off of things from the past. Which leads to innovation and new things are adjusted to use in present day. From that, the invention of the typewriter helped influence what we now know as the keyboard. But, there were difficulties in the way like being able to project the text from the keyboard onto a screen to display the typing.

The inventor of the typewriter was Christopher Latham Sholes who patented the invention on October 1867. Later on, he sold the rights of the typewriter to the Remington rifle company which made changes and eventually lead to its commercial success.

The first prototype did not have the number one or zero as the originator considered there was no need to add those number. He would make the number one with a capital I and a zero with a capital O as the letters looked similar to the numbers when capitalized.

One may notice by staring at a keyboard is that the letters are not in alphabetical order. A reason why the keyboard is not in alphabetical order starts with the keys of QWERTY these keys were put in this order to make fast typewriters slower since those were the most popular letters used throughout typing. Another reason, is that when people would use typewriters which used small hammers to print the letter onto paper the mechanical device would jam from the user typing too fast and in order to avoid the jamming of the mechanical keys an innovator decided it would be best to separate them to avoid the jamming.

But, an opposing side according to thesmithsonianmag website claims that the real intention of rearranging the keys was to improve the process of decoding morse code messages as the alphabetical keys slowed down the process.